Funky UFO weekend in Shag Harbour with band’s album launch

The band Unidentified Funk Object will launch a new album Sunday in Shag Harbour. (CONTRIBUTED)

SHAG HARBOUR — One of Nova Scotia’s funkiest ensembles, Unidentified Funk Object, will launch their new album Sunday evening in Shag Harbour during the annual UFO weekend.

Space Funk Party features a track called Shag Harbour.

“For a UFO-themed band from Nova Scotia, I felt we had to do this,” said Greg Melchin, the band’s frontman and songwriter.

“I knew about the UFO festival and everything. Shag Harbour is one of our more famous ones,” he said about Canadian unidentified flying object sightings.

Late in the evening of Oct. 4, 1967, several witnesses claimed they saw something crash in the ocean off Shag Harbour. No aircraft were reported to have been nearby that night. A gooey mat of yellow foam about seven centimetres thick was soon seen floating off Shag Harbour.

“We’ve been getting some good responses,” he said Friday from Halifax. “People have been steadily watching it since I put the video together last week,.”

The smooth refrain repeats a time or two like a mantra:

“Let’s go down to Shag Harbour, baby, I wanna get down like the UFO,

“Let’s go down to Shag Harbour, baby, Get on the water like the yellow foam.”

Cindy Nickerson, chairwoman of the Shag Harbour Incident Society, said, “It was nifty. It was kind of cute.”

Society members have been busy putting the annual festival together for this weekend. Lectures, free alien movies, a family picnic and an alien fashion show are on tap.

Although the busy UFO weekend is underway for the seventh time, some fear it may be the last. That’s because something weird happened this year involving the Shag Harbour Incident Society.

It was nothing like a repeat of the alleged 1967 alien touchdown off the tiny fishing community. Rather, the provincial and federal governments did not provide funding to the UFO museum and annual event.

“It’s very weird,” said Nickerson, who has used federal and provincial money to hire summer students at the museum.

Last year and this year, the organization been refused provincial and federal funding.

One reason given was the fact that the museum incorporated a general store, the Emerald Isle Convenience Store.

“So we blocked the store off so it would be separated from the museum,” said Nickerson.

“We’ve had nearly a thousand visitors this summer. We’ve had 22 groups that came off of the (Yarmouth) ferry.”

Visitors continue to come from Finland, Australia, Switzerland and England.

More funding for promotion could do wonders for the local economy, said Nickerson.

“Take Roswell, New Mexico, for example. Millions of people go there every year,” she said about the fabled UFO site in the desert.

After a site visit and discussions with the museum, tourism officials determined that requirements for funding a summer student were not met, said Toby Koffman, a spokesman for the Economic and Rural Development and Tourism Department.

Koffman said government has provided the museum with $2,250 for a couple of projects in recent years.